Friday, March 21, 2008

Prince Caspian Screening in Tokyo

Link CAN got the opportunity to book a group of nine to a screening of Prince Caspian, the second in the series of Narnia films being produced by Disney.

The large theater in Shinjuku was packed with media people, at least six hundred of them. We only got to see around fifteen minutes of footage, and at least half of it was still in the rough cut stage of editing, so there were blank areas, and other anomalies.

But, I was VERY impressed with what they showed us of Prince Caspian. "The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe," (the first film in this series) was rather disappointing to me, not bad, just not as good as it could have been. So I was pleased to see that this second movie is going to be far better than the first one. Why? There is a lot of action, darker, better acting, a better story, and an important point for me is that Aslan promises to be a great deal more captivating than he was in the first film.

Both the producer, Mark Johnson, and Ben Burnes (Prince Caspian), showed up for the event. We got to hear about 45 minutes of comments from Johnson and Burnes, and then a short Q and A time (one of our party noted that only women were called on to ask a question -- I have no idea what that means).

Quoting Mark Johnson (Producer) :
  • "Very different (than the first movie), more dramatic, darker, a lot more action... takes place mostly in woods."
  • "The trees are very, very important in this movie."
  • Part of the journey of this movie is to bring out the trees, it is through Aslan that the trees are brought back to life.
Quoting Ben Burnes (Prince Caspian)
  • "A story about bringing the magic back into Narnia."
  • "I spent the morning praying in a Shinto shrine for the success of the movie."
  • There are 1,600 effects shots in the movie, only 600 of which are done at this time -- "we will have it done on May 15 and not a day before that."
Prince Caspian will be released in the US on May 16, 2008 & in Japan on May 21, 2008

1 comment:

Scot Eaton said...

That sounds great. I was actually a pretty big fan of the first one. I have always (personally) thought that "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" was the weakest book of the series, and I was pleasantly surprised to find how much power the movie had. If the second one is better, great!

I find it very interesting that the producer saw fit to mention the trees. That probably wouldn't have been important information in the USA, but it shows that the questions I posed in the last post are being asked by Christians and non-Christians alike.